the good hand
by lyin
Summary: Bran Stark, mildly, says more to his plate than his sister, "By what right does the wolf judge the lion?" and Jaime chokes on his wine : Jaime Lannister is not at home in Winterfell, even if he is happy putting logs on Brienne's fire.


They don't drink, the second time. Jaime goes back to her door the next night, and Brienne lets him in without a word. It's only once the latch clicks that she clears her throat a little and, eyes fixing on his empty arms, says, "I don't have anything to drink."

Jaime blinks, glances down and away from his good hand and his golden one. How strange, still, to think of his left as his good hand.

"I didn't think to bring any," he says. Somewhere between thrown and amused, he half-turns back to the door. "We could—"

Brienne catches his arm.

"I don't need it," she says. "I thought you… might."

"I'm not such a sot as all that," Jaime says, not sure if he should bristle at the implication. Then he realizes her cheeks are flushed, and not from the fire. And she's not looking at him.

She's got a hold on his good arm, still. Taking a deep breath, he tips one knuckle of his false hand under her chin. The merest nudge makes her lift her head high again.

"I don't have to be in my cups to want you," Jaime says. The words come out with more of a stumble than he'd like. "I'd hope you… know that."

She meets his eyes for a long moment, her own wide gaze at once so steady and so trembling it feels she sees every inch of his soul, all his deeds and misdeeds. Then she reaches up to cup his false hand where it still brushes her chin, smooths down his sleeve just a finger's worth, just enough space for her to press her lips to the skin there.

She wouldn't be doing that, if she really could see all his misdeeds. When his lips land on hers, it's all the harder, for that thought.

* * *

"Being… in bed with you is the longest I've heard you shut up for," Brienne says later. "It's—disconcerting."

"Hmm," he says, smiling faintly against her shoulder.

"I like to be good at things," Brienne says, her tone a little abrupt. "You can tell me, if there's something you'd like that I…" He doesn't know how she meant to end the sentence. He's intrigued, as she clears her throat to try again. "I've trained enough to understand what's required to improve at, at—"

"At handling swords?" Jaime says wickedly, and rolls out of the way of her elbow.

"I mean it," Brienne says.

She's so deadly earnest about it Jaime says "all right," and lays back. He looks at the ceiling thoughtfully.

"There's one thing," he says at last, and he can feel her tension through the bed. "The fire could use another log."

There's silence, for a moment. Then she hits him with a pillow, and Jaime laughs, rolls over and catches her up, flush against him. He pulls the fur over them both, plants kisses from her breast to belly and lower still, pauses only when he can tell something's grabbing her attention.

"What is it?" he asks.

"The fire does need another log," Brienne admits, clearly weighing getting up against the warm furs and sheets and him.

He mouths 'diligence' against her thigh and she lets out a scoffing sound, then a protesting one as he pulls away and gets out of bed.

"While I'm having a moment of chivalry," he says, with a mock bow, and puts another log on before sliding back to her. "Don't expect too many noble deeds; I'll leave those to you, ser."

"As if you could help yourself," Brienne says, carding her fingers through his hair.

He goes still. It's a beat, only. He moves again too soon, too distractingly, for her to catch his moment frozen, at what she thinks of him.

* * *

It is cold in the morning, the flagstones holding onto the night's chill so deeply one is reluctant to step upon them.

In the mornings, it is hard not to think of how Ned Stark did not want to leave his bed and his furs and his wife and march south to be Robert Baratheon's hand.

Brienne's room is in close proximity to Sansa's; Jaime is sleeping on the _family_ side of the castle. The windows face the same side as the room where the Lord of Winterfell slept; he looks out over the same view Ned Stark looked over, near where the man slept and dreamed and first held his children. Ned Stark's view. Jaime does not know who this room belonged to the last time he was a guest of this castle and tries not to contemplate if he is fucking in Robb Stark's old bedroom, if this was where the Young Wolf was dandled on his mother's knee.

He has been trying not to think of Ned Stark, though he's in the damned man's castle, by the leave of his daughter. Every time Jon Snow was in sight, he thought of Ned Stark, unavoidably, but Snow is gone, gone along with the dragon queen and Tyrion too, and yet it is now, more than ever, Jaime feels surrounded by Starks.

There are far fewer people at dinner, and fewer distractions.

Bran Stark is at every damn meal.

"Let's eat in bed tonight," Jaime says to Brienne, only once, as if he's half-joking. She's tempted, he can see it.

But Sansa expects them, of course. With so few highborn guests left in Winterfell, they are welcomed at her head table. With Bran.

"I see our Northern food is not to your taste, Ser Jaime," Lady Sansa says one night, and he knows that carefully-bland tone enough to know this is about to be a torment. It's been his tone, so, so many a time; it's been—he tries to stop that thought. "I am afraid our portions are not like to meet guest standards for a long while."

"Winterfell has been supporting many guests," Jaime says, forcing a slight incline of his head, "I am grateful, entirely, for my share, and assure you I am simply taking my time enjoying it."

Brienne, beside him, looks truly grateful at his careful reply. Her knee brushes his under the table. She is the reason his plate has come cut so well, though the meat, possibly horse though Jaime is trying not to think about that, is so gristly still-smaller pieces would be of use.

"I do envy that you are able to take your time," Sansa says, still in that tone. "I have piles of letters and mending that must wait all day for my attention at night. I am glad you, Ser Jaime, are finding your time as a guest of Winterfell _restful_."

The castle is in a state of reconstruction, and most able men left to them here at Winterfell, are training less, if at all. They are working. It is a time of hammer and nails, of shifting wooden pillars and stones into place, and Jaime is a one-handed man who has built nothing in his life. Brienne keeps suggesting he survey everything, so he spends much of the days walking the walls he expected to die on, and the crunch of his own feet on snow follows him about. He has never done well with quiet.

He swallows replies that could aim curt or lewd, about how much rest he's getting in Brienne's bed, and says, "Would that every soldier had such opportunity for refreshment, after our battle."

He hopes the coming battle, the one they're sitting out, will be go unspoken.

Sansa says, "We in the North must hope we will have little requiring us to be refreshed, beyond the business of living. You must be glad of it, Ser Jaime, after so long at war." _At war with my family_, Sansa's eyes say, a colder blue than Brienne's. Catelyn Tully's eyes.

_Must I?_ he thinks, reaching for his wine glass, and Brienne shifts beside him.

"My lady—" she says, but Jaime doesn't get to hear what change of subject, what excuse for them to leave the table, perhaps even what outright defense, his own lady is about to make.

Bran Stark, mildly, says more to his plate than his sister, "By what right does the wolf judge the lion?" and Jaime chokes on his wine.

Brienne stills, and Sansa's eyes fly between them, briefly.

"By the same rights we judge ourselves, Bran," Sansa says, and she'd sound like just an older sister speaking to a foolish younger brother, but for the underlying unease, awareness that what Bran's said was no idle phrase. Sansa pushes her chair back and excuses herself. "As I've said—my mending waits."

It's the next evening that Brienne suggests perhaps he had the right idea, and just that night, they should eat in bed, and Jaime briefly holds close the picture of them alone, in bed, the world shut out. But the grapes and cheeses in the bower of his imagination are not to be found in Winterfell, and Brienne had been right, as she always seems to be: they are expected, and he would be a sorrier excuse for a lion than he is already, to be cowed so easily at the slightest flash of teeth.

* * *

Sometimes when he closes his eyes he still sees Brandon Stark, the first Brandon Stark Jaime had known, strangling himself to reach his burning father, or no, really, to reach the _sword_ The Mad King had placed just out of Brandon's reach. It had been hard not to think of it, a time or two, whether Jaime would've done the same with his place and Brandon's exchanged. To dream of it, a time or two more. Even on fire, Tywin Lannister would most like be ordering him with his eyes not to be _stupid_, but Jaime never was much for standing still. Most like, Jaime would have killed himself, too, reaching for a sword, _so close_ and yet unreachable.

"What were you dreaming of," Brienne asks him when he reaches his arm around her in the middle of the night, her voice sleepy and so rote, so expecting, it's not entirely a question. It's surety he'll tell her, surety that's strengthened each night he's stayed at her side, surety that makes him glad.

He'd been dreaming of the sword, reaching for it with the hand that's only there in his dreams, his _good_ hand, his quick one, his gone one. So close. So unreachable.

"You," he says, not teasing. Nor lying.

He shoved Brandon Stark's namesake off a tower with the hand he has left, the hand he's tracing Brienne's spine with. She doesn't know that. That is, not that detail, specifically.

He forgets, sometimes, that Brienne does know. Maybe he tries not to think about it. There are many things Jaime Lannister tries not to think about.

He'd expected to die, on Winterfell's walls in the dark, and some days there is pure bemusement to finding himself alive and blinking in the sun on snow. It catches him up in a roaring delight for minutes at a time, and every time he catches the glint of sunlight off Brienne's armor is a log on that fire, and then he catches sight of Bran Stark, in his chair, watching the repairs to the walls… worse, he catches Brienne watching him watch Bran, a frown around her eyes and sadness in them, _knowing_, and everything in Jaime seems to drop and clench at once—

_Quite the little climber, aren't you?_

-when had that become, of all the sorry actions of his life, the one he would most gladly have undone? He had put the memory of it away so long.

He'd put away, too, that Brienne met him knowing the truth of him and Cersei, knowing him from Catelyn Stark as the man who'd near killed a child, knowing him from the Northern camp as the strangler of his own cousin, knowing him as all the realm did as the Kingslayer.

It all gets mixed up in his dreams, Brandon Stark strangling, his cousin strangling, Bran falling off the tower as Jaime does not even turn to look, until he's killed them all and been in their places time over blurring time. Once he startles away silently, Brienne still sleeping, and goes to say her name, because as she's told him brusquely when she's woke to find him staring at the ceiling, she doesn't mind, he _ought_ to wake her and they'll argue themselves asleep… and it stops on his lips, her name only a breath apart from Bran, and who is he, to deserve her comfort, her nobility.

'The Rains of Castamere' comes into his head one day, he's heard it enough times since his youth, and in his idleness catches himself humming it, three times. _And who are you_-

All three times he stops himself before anyone hears him, thank gods. Winterfell is no place for such a song, but he can't stop the humming in his bones, attuned to a faraway, terrible song.

* * *

Brienne does try, to find him something to do, which is how Jaime finds himself sitting down with Sansa Stark. He was meant, once, to be the lord of a Great House, and was trained to be, at Casterly Rock, in his squire days at Crakehall. But his training prepared him for leading aflush in funds, not rebuilding in winter, and his fate had changed at age fifteen. That was a very long time ago, and Sansa Stark has little patience.

"Ser Jaime," Sansa says, crisply polite, after a few fumbling moments overlooking her budget, "please do not think I mistake your value. If I were presently in need of a field commander, I would speak to you. Should I in coming days have reason to fear for the safety of my person, I should consult your years of expertise. If—"

"A tourney suddenly arises, you'll apply to me for jousting stratagems?" Jaime says, and Sansa's mouth curves, without warming her eyes.

"Field commanders were needed in the south," Sansa says. "If I am to be honest with you, I would rather your abilities at my brother's side, and Davos Seaworth here, organizing with me. Except your abilities come rather attached to _you_, Ser Jaime _Lannister_."

He looks briefly at his golden hand, heavy on the table, and thinks, _ah, yes, my attached abilities_.

"Would you have trusted me, Lady Sansa, if I had said I would go south in this fight?" he asks. "Would you trust the Kingslayer, at your brother's back?"

"I trust Lady Brienne's judgment," Sansa says. "Were you another man, your estimation of her, alone, might win you my good will. Since you are not, consider my own judgment on you a counterbalance. I'm sure it has little impact on what you tell yourself at night."

She turns back, to her review of numbers on parchment, to lists of trade routes reopened that may offer new avenues of food, supplies. The few times she glances up at him, it isn't her mother she reminds him of, and her eyes have as little use for him as Ned Stark ever did.

It is a strange thing, to sit across from the girl he once thought of as his last chance for honor, a chance he sent Brienne to take for him, and feel himself useless. Sansa's sitting with him solely to make Brienne happy, and it moves him, to see Brienne's happiness cared for, perhaps too to see any liege so concerned with their sworn sword. But it doesn't give him a thing to do, except sit in silence, making sure he doesn't gods-forbid start _humming_, until it has been long enough for him to take his leave without worrying Brienne her well-meant plan has gone wrong.

A counterbalance, Sansa said, weighing all she knows against him against all she knows in his favor, but she's missing a piece. Sansa doesn't know about Bran, that it was Jaime's action that led to Tyrion being taken in the first place. Bran hasn't told her, and neither has Brienne. Jaime's heard of Baelish's role, by now, but Jaime's the one who gave Baelish material to work with.

He has been standing outside doors more than half his life, and now he hasn't even got a door to guard, he thinks, when he finally turns the door to leave.

"Ser Jaime," Sansa Stark says. He turns back, to find her looking at him, clear-eyed. "I have been meaning to say. I am sorry, about Myrcella and Tommen. For their own sakes."

Throat too tight to answer, he bows.

There are so many things Jaime Lannister tries not to think about.

* * *

"Where have you been all my life," he says in the curve of Brienne's ear one night, less question, more dose of irony. Lying down their faces are even, though her toes, on her longer legs, stretch slightly closer to the edge of their bed.

"I've been in your life for some years now," she counters, amused, but never past reason.

"Not enough," Jaime says, and she squeezes his shoulder as she kisses him, but he's still asking himself the question. Where was she before, when he was untarnished yet, and if he asks her, he knows her answer, _a child on Tarth_, but he doesn't mean actually. In the songs, the true knight is never too late. In the songs, the rot doesn't get the chance to set into a soul. His Kingsguard brothers didn't return to save him, and Selmy, who did, didn't speak up for him, and Stark didn't speak to him, he saw a knight who could kill a king and still smile. Even if they had, even if they did—

He'd been Cersei's already, then. Cersei reigns over all the things Jaime tries not to think of, most of all when in bed with Brienne, but she's ruled his thoughts as long as he could recall.

Brienne doesn't ask him where he was all her life. She knows where he was, and who with.

* * *

Tyrion was to rule in Winterfell, if their father had his way. Jaime does not bring that up.

Jaime was to marry Lysa Tully, if his father had his way even earlier, and if he ever visited Winterfell, it would have been as goodbrother to its Lady and Lord.

He might have shoved Lysa Tully from a great height himself, if he'd had to marry her, it isn't as if he hasn't proven himself capable of such before. He decidedly does not speak that thought aloud.

For all the might-have-beens and might-yet-be's he ponders, in weeks at Winterfell, Jaime only brings one up.

"Not much would have changed, if I hadn't come North," he says one night, conscious of how indulgently self-pitying he sounds.

Brienne is undressing for bed, while he sits on the end of it. On another night he'd smirk and watch, but he's moody tonight, conscious that she'll be more efficient without his help.

"I would be dead," Brienne says.

"I'm not so sure of that."

"I am," she says. "And likely Pod with me."

"We did fight well together." He would not have wanted her to die facing those things. He had not, particularly, wanted to die facing them himself; it seemed a great deal less glorious when the corpses piled on, all stick and gnawing teeth, despair on legs.

"I would not be a knight, either," Brienne says.

"You were already more a knight than—" _me_, Jaime was going to say, but that turns their exchange back to his own melancholy, and her nobility of soul means so much more than that. "Anyone. And I've known more knights than most."

"You simply didn't know any well enough to sleep with," Brienne says, so calmly Jaime blinks, startled into a slow smile.

She makes sure she is looking him in the eye before she says, "Jaime… I'm glad to be a knight, and to be alive. I'm glad of you. It matters to me, that you came to Winterfell." Her eyes say, too, _that you've stayed_, but she doesn't say _stay_, yet.

"I had to come," he says. "I dreamed of you."

* * *

The first night Jaime made love to Brienne, she'd let him take the side of the bed that allows him to reach for her, without him needing to ask.

He'd watched her sleep, and reached for her in a morning that felt shy in its newness. Their kisses were always more peaceful when the sun was up, and they'd found that, that first morning, quietly together, unsure how to begin talking again after spending some considerable time using very few words. She'd helped him dress, and if Jaime was a little wary of how quickly Brienne had hurried to go about her day, off to her duties, he was more still more sure of his welcome, returning to her door. By the third night, he'd moved his pack to her room. He'd come with little enough, and obtained only borrowed armor, which unfortunately made a little more noise when he dropped some en route—but Brienne had only burst out laughing, with no concern about any additional attention at him entering her chambers.

When Jaime suggested having a care for her reputation, Brienne said "_What_ reputation," as if anyone called her the _Maid of Tarth_ with any sincerity—he did, Jaime protested, and she rolled her eyes at that, and though the title had been true, until a few nights ago, Brienne seemed to care more about what truth was between them. She didn't ask him about marriage. She still didn't seem to even be thinking, or trying to keep herself from, asking about marriage, which was all well and good except that Jaime was wondering.

What came after Winterfell, now that there was an afterwards?

* * *

"It's your choice," Bran Stark tells him one day, without preamble.

The only ambling is being done by Jaime, staggered by a raven's words, his feet taking him around Winterfell and wondering if it might be the last time.

"What is?" Jaime asks him, but Bran only says, "Your choice. You know what it is."

"Would it make a difference?" Jaime says. The dragon queen is going to the capitol with her last-remaining dragon. His sister, within her a child who seems like nothing but dream, is either going to hold onto a throne at any cost to her people or die burning herself. He slayed a king once, but he had two hands then. "Does it matter any, my choice?"

"Only to some," Bran Stark tells him, flat-voiced.

Jaime looks to the hand he has left, the one he once changed a child's life with in any easy shove, the hand he somehow calls his good one.

Only to some.

* * *

It is weeks upon weeks after their first night, when he brings wine back to their bedroom. It has been a day of thinking about things he would rather not, since he saw a note read in a courtyard. Of dwelling on his sister, and a child that only might be, and other children that could be, of the Mad King and swords and the circles he is treading in winter snow.

"Courage," he says, as he pours them both glasses.

"What of it?"

"I wasn't sure what I'd do, if you turned me away," Jaime says. He sips and hands Brienne her glass. He'd brought Dornish red, again, the finest he could find. He has so little to offer her that is fine. "It's what I needed the drink for. The first night."

"You," Brienne says, the word disbelieving in her mouth, though too warm to be doubtful, as if she thought courage ran in his blood. The Lannister cleverness certainly didn't.

"Me, more than most," he says.

"You thought I'd turn you away?" Brienne says, still disbelieving, still warm. "The time I would've is… long past."

"I'd have been here sooner, if I'd known that," Jaime says, his voice light. His eyes are aching. "Gods, Brienne, I wish I'd been here sooner."

If he kisses her too hard, grips her too tight, she doesn't call him on it. She meets him, with equal force, equal challenge, and only when they are collapsed, panting, breathless, does she grab his left hand with her right and lace their fingers. She falls asleep, that way, and Jaime only knows she is asleep, truly, when her grip slackens.

Only then does he get up. The first thing he does is put logs on the fire, more than enough to keep the room warm through the dawning.

Slowly, stiff-motioned, he begins putting on his gear. He has grown accustomed to the motions, and the little wine they drank is long gone from his head, but still, it takes him some time. He could be quicker about it, than he's being.

Brienne is very still, in their bed. In her bed, that he shares.

Jaime is not sure what he thinks he's doing.

He doesn't know if he has a plan, what calls him toward his sister, to kiss her or kill her or fulfill some curse on them both.

It feels too late, to do anything else.

Jaime cannot tell if Brienne is sound asleep or feigning, now, waiting to see what he will do. During their time traveling together, suddenly years ago, he'd made a study of it, whenever she would dare shut her eyes. He knows her. And yet, yet, he still hasn't learned her well enough. Not yet. He cannot tell.

If she were to sit up now, in the bedchamber they share, to find him dressed for travel—

Sansa Stark would be in earshot should Brienne raise her voice, sound the alarm. If Jaime Lannister riding south warrants alarm, these days.

Or she could hold him here, likely, herself. She's strong enough.

If she stops him now—

He doesn't know if she would stop him, if she found him trying to go.

His steps toward the door are not so quiet. He's not so sure he doesn't want to be stopped. He's not so sure about anything, really. He'd like to talk it out with Brienne, if she wasn't so involved in the question. He's never struggled for words in his life, the way he has with her, since he came to Winterfell. He's never hesitated in his actions, not as he's hesitating toward the door.

He watches her, not sure what he would say if she were to suddenly fix those blue eyes upon him and demand an explanation.

When she's awake, she always seems to point him toward some purpose.

If Brienne wakes… if Brienne says his name before he leaves this bedchamber, before he …

He may have to stay.

Maybe, he could let himself stay.

* * *

The first night he'd loved her was longer ago. He only saw it looking back, but it must've been a night spent on cold ground, her in that awful pink dress, Bolton's men around them. They'd slept close, within reach, maybe each thinking they were protecting the other, but not touching. Of course not. Brienne had been exhausted enough the first few nights after the bear pit, she slept soundly despite the ground, while Jaime, arm still throbbing to the time of his pulse, watched her sleep. He'd told himself he was watching out for Bolton's men. Mostly, he'd watched her hand, the part of her closest to reach. Her sword hand, in reach of the one he had remaining.

He'd almost reached to take her hand that night, out of impulse, out of cold, out of the dark's haunting sounds and silence. So close. So out of reach. It'd kill him, to get any closer.

Or maybe, if he did reach out, if he could only reach her sword hand, that would be the steel he needed, against the rest of it all. If he reached out, maybe, then, it'd be enough to live.

* * *

_..._

_..._

_..._

_Lady or the tiger: is it canon compliant or does it cut off right before it goes completely un-canon compliant? You decide._


End file.
